Michelle Malkin, whose claim to fame is defending the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, followed all of the action closely and provided her fans with updates on Twitchy – a conservative Us Weekly without the charm – and contributed to the conversation about war, peace and militarism by calling me a “jack ass” and “douche bag.”

The inclusion of my own personal experiences with veterans, and the testimony of their own heartbreak over the costs of carrying out the orders of Empire, would have humanized my argument. But I wonder if it would have made any measure of difference. The overwhelming majority of readers who reacted with rage to my article showed no evidence of actually reading it. Had the people who accused me of “hating the troops” or “supporting terrorism” given the essay even a cursory look, they would have seen that I twice stated that some of the troops are heroes, but that many are not. They would have also learned that, unlike many of the political pawns of the Pentagon who can’t cry enough tears for our “heroes,” I support providing all veterans with the best possible healthcare and psychiatric services. My antiwar advocacy and resistance to militarism is, partially, motivated by solidarity with the military – a term I used in the original essay. Fewer soldiers fighting fewer wars translates into fewer funerals, and less waste and betrayal of the bravery that active duty military personnel do display on the battlefield. In the words of historian Thaddeus Russell, “calling soldiers heroes gets more soldiers killed.”